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March 24, 2009 in Idaho
Harwood: U.S. is a confederacy
Measure asserts Idaho sovereignty
BOISE – Promoting his state sovereignty resolution on the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives on Monday, St. Maries Rep. Dick Harwood declared that the United States is really a “confederacy.”
“To be accurate, we’re a confederated republic,” the fifth-term Republican then told the House.
Not everyone was buying it.
Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, a retired high school government teacher, attempted a quick rebuttal.
“The Constitution clearly states that … we the people do ordain and establish this government,” he told the House. “Our government is a government of the people and by the people and for the people. It is not a compact of states. “I think that issue was further defined during the Civil War.”
But Sayler’s comments did little to change the tenor of the debate, and Harwood’s resolution affirming Idaho’s sovereignty won easy approval in the Republican-dominated House.
Harwood’s effort left some people shaking their heads.
Political scientists said Harwood’s description of the U.S. as a confederacy is dead wrong, and a longtime Kootenai County human rights activist criticized Harwood’s use of the term.
“It’s a very offensive term for minority communities in our country, like African-Americans,” said Tony Stewart, a board member and co-founder of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, and a retired political scientist at North Idaho College. “That whole term refers to the period of slavery.”
Steve Shaw, a professor of political science at Northwest Nazarene University, said the United States is neither a unitary system, where the federal government is all-powerful, nor a confederacy, a loose organization of sovereign states that can secede at any time and have no central power.
“I don’t know if Harwood is intentionally blurring the categories or if he’s just confused,” he said.
He added, “The original thing the founders did was to create this so-called federal republic, because there wasn’t one like it at the time.”
Switzerland is an example of a modern confederacy.
“Sometimes the terminology gets confusing,” Shaw said. “But I haven’t heard anyone talk about the confederacy since I went to school in the South.”
Shaw said Harwood may be in need of “remedial U.S. history courses.”
Harwood, for his part, said, “If I’m wrong, then I guess I’m wrong. But my understanding of it all was that we were a confederated republic.” He said he thought that President Abraham Lincoln changed things so that states couldn’t secede but that the nation remained a confederacy.
Stewart said the Articles of Confederation governed the initial 13 colonies, but they were abolished in 1787 with the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Only when the South seceded from the union in 1861 was a confederacy formed among the Southern states; it ended in 1865 when the South lost the Civil War.
“History changes a lot over the years, especially in our colleges,” Harwood said. “Lots of things that have happened in the history of our country never get told in college courses.”
The lawmaker, who earned a community college vocational certificate, said he picked up on the “confederacy” term after reading a Pennsylvania legislative resolution, though the term doesn’t appear in his Idaho sovereignty resolution, House Joint Memorial 4.
“What I’m saying is each state has its own constitution, that’s what I’m saying,” Harwood said, “and we have a right to govern ourselves.”
HJM 4, a nonbinding memorial to Congress and the president, declares Idaho’s sovereignty from the federal government and asks the federal government to “cease and desist” from violating that sovereignty.
Harwood read from the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and told the House: “With them words, the states of this United States created the federal government.”
His resolution declares, “The scope of power defined by the 10th Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states.”
Shaw said: “That’s historical error to say the states created the system. It’s actually the other way around.”
Harwood said his resolution is part of a “grass-roots movement” among legislators around the country, and several states are considering similar resolutions.
HJM 4 passed the Idaho House on Monday on a 51-17 vote and now moves to the Senate.
Betsy Z. Russell can be reached toll-free at (866) 336-2854 or bzrussell@gmail.com.
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jfrenchnd on March 24 at 9:14 a.m.
Actually, the original formal government of the U.S. was established by the Articles of Confederation, not “Confederacy”, as this article labels it. The outcome (though not the originally authorized purpose) of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was to replace the Articles of Confederation with a stronger central government that left unenumerated powers to the states. Thus, the states are sovereign, but limited by the power of the sovereign people, whose representatives met and ratified the Constitution of the United States over the next two years. Since 1789 we have been a democratic federal Republic, not a confederacy, and no state is independent of the sovereignty of the United States. Mr. Harwood needs to retake basic high school civics. It is embarassing for Idaho that apparently many of its legislators do not understand the basis of our national government.
Steve86 on March 24 at 8:45 p.m.
Texas has never officially seceeded to the union. Good for Mr Harwood. Im glad to see this was approved. The 10th is worthless, as it is written too loosely. It basically gives limited power to the states. I have seen way too many state issues overturned by the feds and it is a crock of $hit. The 20 some odd states that accepted and spent federal bailout money should form thier own socialist nation and stop leaching from the states that know how to budget thier money. This is where state soverienty could really make a difference. I would like to see how it would work given a chance. The states that are forming thier own soverienty which I think is up to 12 with Oklahoma are on the right track and should actually secceed and form thier own union.